News Bites 3/26 – 4/2

If you start seeing lemons where you expect to see limes, the reason for the swapping of citrus fruits is a lime shortage that has resulted from bad weather, a bad harvest, and a bacterial disease spread by a tiny flying insect and only affecting limes in Mexico, where most of the limes we eat in the U.S. come from. In one case, the price of limes has gone up from $14 to $100 which has prompted many to use their limes more sparingly and in the dishes that need them most, like guacamole and beer. Others are just accepting the inflation, like Christian Plotczyk of Rosa Mexicano in NYC who is going to take the financial risk in order to keep serving the fresh lime juice margaritas that customers have come to expect.

Photo by First We Feast

Now we here at NYU have a pretty spectacular Nutrition and Food Studies program that started in 1989. But it seems the rest of higher education is finally catching on to the fact that food can actually play an integral role in understanding economics, politics, culture, and society. Collages are beginning to offer courses like Gastrodiplomacy at American University, Food Writing at Columbia University, Design of Coffee and Introduction to Winemaking at UC Davis, and you can check out the rest of them here. If our classes were taught by David Chang (at Harvard), perhaps we wouldn’t mind going to class so much anymore.

Photo by Chicago Tribune

Connecticut fast food workers will be the first in the country to start receiving a minimum wage of $10.10 starting in 2017. The law will apply to the 70,000 to 90,000 fast food workers in Connecticut. However Connecticut’s 27,000 waiters, who by law were receiving 69% of the minimum wage, had their wages cut to 63.2% last legislative session and will have to rely more than before on the generosity of customer’s tips.

Photo by Serious Eats

Is toast the new cupcake? Fancy toasts are on the rise in New York City, so leave your butter and jam at home and expand your toasty horizons.Cha-an Teahouse (Japanese Tea House in the East Village) has a particularly intriguing toasted 2-inch thick japanese white bread topped with red bean and an optional scoop of green tea ice cream made in house. Toast may never be the same again.